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Web Survey Bibliography

Title Survey Quality and Mobile Phones
Author Kuusela, V., Notkola, V.
Source JPSM
Year 2005
Access date 26.05.2005
Full text doc (50k)
Abstract Due to the increasing popularity of the mobile phones, the structure of telephone ownership is changing rapidly in many countries. In Finland, the amount of the households having a conventional telephone has decreased during the past ten years from 94% to 78%. Simultaneously the amount of households who have a mobile phone has shown a very rapid growth from less than 5% to 75%. In the end of the millennium, in Finland more households will have a mobile phone than a conventional telephone. In total, the telephone coverage in Finland has grown from 95% (1996) to 98% (1999). The telephone penetration in Finland is described elsewhere (see Kuusela and Vikki, 1999).

Nearly 80% of households in Finland have at least one mobile phone and more than 20% of households have more than one mobile phone. It has been observed already earlier that mobile phones are not always adjuncts but they replaced conventional phones (Kuusela, 1998). This tendency seems to continue even in the future. For the time being, more than 20% of households in Finland have exclusively a mobile phone (one or more) and even that number may be much larger in a few years. A crucial issue here is how popular the Internet is going to be because mobile phones are inconvenient for that purpose.  

The primary reason to undertake this study was that conducting an interview over a mobile phone is different from doing that over a conventional phone. People carry a mobile phone nearly all the time and consequently the respondent may receive the call practically anywhere. Therefore, the respondent may be in a somehow uncomfortable situation and hence he or she may give answers heedlessly. Moreover, people are sometimes reluctant to speak long in a mobile phone and therefore they may answer hurriedly. For instance, they may be afraid that the batteries run out. In Finland, there are usually no expenses from receiving a call, but if the mobile phone is abroad then both parties pay half the price.

From a survey organisation’s point of view noticing that the restructuring on telephone coverage does not happen equally in all population segments is important. In figure 1 is displayed the structure of the telephone penetration in some population segments. It is obvious that disregarding the mobile phones in survey practice would leave some parts of the population intact. That would happen also if conventional phones were disregarded.

Especially, in telephone surveys where the sampling frame is a list of telephone numbers, there will be some under coverage if only conventional phones are included. Even if mobile phones are included, there may still be some under coverage because mobile phones are not listed as frequently as conventional phones or they are not listed to the person using them.

On the other hand, if mobile phones are included in sampling the frame, the selection probabilities of some households will be too big because they have more than one mobile phone in the household, possibly in addition to the conventional phone.

There are many reports of research on the potential effects telephones have in surveys. However, no reports concerning the usage of phones in interviews published so far refer to the effects of mobile phones. For instance, the bibliography made by Khurshild and Sahai (1995) did not have any entries that dealt with mobile phones. Still, in 1999, Collins made only a brief comment on the growing popularity of mobile phones in the future. Obviously, empirical results concerning the potential effects of mobile phones are not available because of the novelty the issue.

 

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Year of publication2005
Bibliographic typeConference proceedings
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Web survey bibliography - 2005 (76)

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